Category Archives: Trading

So often I get new players asking me for money or tips. I wish I had time to give people personal tips, and wish even more I was rich enough to give everyone money. But I don’t and I am not.

I do however have a standard plan for new players to go from $100 to $500m and earn enough daily to cover points, drugs and further income. It will cost you time and energy (both game and real life) but you won’t need to buy DPs or risk much.

Step 1: Slut for someone (5 days)So the first step is to build some funds. You should be able to ‘attack and lose’ to someone for about $200,000 per loss. There is a caveat here, some people in the forums are scammers and won’t pay you. Check the networth of the person offering, and if possible get meds off them before you make your losses.

You want to aim for 20m, which is 100 losses. You want to try and buy items that sell quickly and have a stable price to hide the money you make as you get it. If you watch the point market you can prepate for step 2 during this time too.

Step 2: Point trade (5-20 days)Now you have a small fund you can trade points. The points market is a funny one, there are flower/plushie “traders” who sell points all day in big batches (500+), “bankers” who buy lots of points to hide money, “users” who want to just buy points to use for refills, then “skimmers” (like we will be) who buy big batches at low prices, and sell in smaller batches at higher prices.

The aim here is to have a high volume of points traded. You should be able to buy 200-250 point batches and then list 25/50/100 at 200-500$ more than you bought. thats $40,000 profit for every batch you buy minimum and up to $100k. 250 points normally sell every 30 minutes. As a test I listed 25 at 00:53 at about $400 more per point than I bought a batch of 100 points at, they sold at 00:57, that is 4 minutes. If I had more listings I may have sold 150 points in that time.

You are aiming here for at least $2m a day, and you will be capped at about $5m a day. Three weeks of this and you can skip steps 3&4

Step 3: Item Trade quickly (10-15 days+)You can now start buying some of the quicker moving items, Xanax, Meds and Flower/Plushies, so if you haven’t already buy a bazaar (250 points from point building).

These sell more slowly, but the profit margins are similar and you have to do less work. You need to start by checking the prices graphs of a few potential items and work out which one is currently low. You can either buy from someone else’s bazaar, or check trade chat to try and find deals on bulk items. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and always be wary of scams and buy-muggers.

You want to aim for 1% profit per item, and sell all your items you buy within 48 hours. At 0.5% a day it isn’t as much profit as you can make from points, but is more hands off and may suit your real life life-style better.

If you allow $20m for point trading, then you should have $30m you can item trade with at this point – As you start to build your wealth you will find you either have too much stock to sell, or too much money to hide. You now want to start concentrating on higher priced items. The higher the price the bigger the change in pricing, and the easier profit is. The best items for this are Cans, eDVDs and Supply packs. You want to aim for having as little as possible in cash available at any time – Money in your wallet is idle, and a mug risk.

Again if you have allowed $20m for points trading, you should now have $50m+ for items trading.

Step 4: Invest in Benefit BlocksYou should now be earning between $2-5m a day, and at some point all of the above will be making so much profit you can’t keep buying points and items. It’s now time to invest in some stocks, and if you want to be lazy the best way is benefit blocks.

Start with LSC, it’s cheap and pays roughly $900k a week in payouts, or ~1.8% a week. Then TCHS if the medical supplies price is 1% of the BB cost or more.

Eventually you will want PRN, SYM, EWM, SLAG and finally FHG. But before then you will probably want to finish step 5.

Step 5: BankingHopefully at this point you will have been earning merits and have built up quite a bit of value. Spending your merits on banking can be a good idea if you are intent on easily making the cash for drugs and points. You want to be banking any “spare” cash weekly, which allows you to be flexible with what you buy and means your interest starts to compound. One day when you have $2b (or $3b in 10* oil rig) it is best to bank for 2 months at a time. But right now stick with weekly and NEVER use the caymans.

In conjunction with step 4 you should be banking 100-400m a week, and buying your ‘next’ stock block as you go. If you have the time and patience to do steps 2+3 as well you could be earning $100m a week, $5.2b a year.

Having a Bazaar is a must if you want to roll with the billionaires. But you need to know what to sell, how much to buy it for, and how to make profit.

I’m the first to admit I’m quite a lazy trader. I rarely venture into the forums, trade chat or IRC. But that should be your first port of call if you want big profit.

Humble Beginnings

Work out how much cash you have to spend on things for your bazaar. Then decide how many types of thing you want – never put all your eggs in on basket and all that – and if you can watch the market for a bit. Check the graph of price for that item and try and work out how often they sell. This will give you an idea of how many you want to put in your bazaar at once, and what kind of pricing strategy to use.

If you are just starting I would stay with fast selling, low profit items. Don’t get stuck with stock you can’t shift. It’s always better to have cash flow than a bunch of items of value.

When you are finding your stock levels are getting a bit high you can then branch out into other things, and go into the riskier slower paced markets. If I was new to trading I would do something in this order:

Medical items

Drugs

Energy drinks

FHC/DPs

Cesium

SEs

Collectibles

It’s quite obvious that the cheaper items are likely to move faster, but stick with items that get used as well, as they always have higher demand. If for whatever reason the market loses a bit of value you won’t be losing too much, and you won’t be stuck for a long time with an item of no *real* worth.

Pricing strategies

So how do I price things, and how do others price things? Each item type I sell I use a different strategy. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Lowest on market
So for something I have a decent profit margin on I probably just want to sell, below was the market for DPs as I write:

I have some to sell I bought at 23m, and I know DPs don’t get added often. If I sell at 25,449,999 I can probably sell 5 or so before someone else under cuts me

Lowest visible on market
Maybe I have something which I know will sell within 24 hours, but I haven’t got a good deal myself, so to maximise profit I want to price so it could sell today, and if it does it is above the price I bought it. Points are a good example of this – I often buy a big set of points from the market when they are low. I’ll take a gamble that the market will fluctuate enough for mine to sell at 69199 (perhaps some lazy rich guy will want a lot at that price, or if I put in batches of 25 perhaps someone poor will need to buy just 25 and that will be the cheapest 25 batch)

Competitive pricing
So I found something in the city, or got a really fantastic deal, or won something in IRC.. I just want the money to invest in something else. I might here for example list at 425m to try and entice another trader who will be happy listing at 440 and make a quick profit:

Optimistic pricing
So perhaps I have bought something because I want to hide money, and I will use it myself some day if they don’t sell. If they do sell I can buy more cheaper than I sell for anyway (usually the price will drop again from an optimistic price). Below for example I may have bought some FHC from The Accountant, I will then list some of these at 13.5m. Nice profit if they sell, but I use FHC for warring.. so don’t care if they don’t sell either

5 things you should have in your bazaar

Spread your investments and if possible always have these things listed in your bazaar, even if they aren’t the cheapest price on the market:

Beer
Medical items
Camouflage
Pharmacy Items
General Fodder

So each in turn…

Beer – you can buy it for $10 each from Bits’n’bobs, sells at 750-1000 each. That is 75k a day easy!

Medical items – fluctuate a lot as wars go on, nice profit if you can afford a good quantity

Camouflage – ok this is a stretch.. I often put items that *look* similar to others at the same price as the others, just in case some fool buys the wrong thing. eg. Cans of Munster at the price I sell cans of X-MASS, Scimitars at the same price I would sell dual scimitars, melatonin at the same cost as Epi or Serotonin.

Pharmacy items – like beer you can sell easily at a higher price than you can buy from the pharmacy. Of course you need your medical education first, and this one may drop as more people can buy them direct.

General Fodder – what I mean here is a lot of items that you don’t intend to sell. Why? Well lots of players like to buy/mug. If you have lots of items in your bazaar it is harder for them to work out if you are worth buy mugging. It also creates confusion and works well with the Camouflage tactic.

Ok no one can ever truly be mug proof, I get randomly mugged all the time while I am online, and in that one split second I may happen to be moving some money around or buying items etc.

But the majority of the time I manage to do a lot of business without risk of mugs, and still have easy access to cash without risking scams or having to lose money. I’ve split being mug proof into 3 concepts, safe trading, self- hospitalizing and hiding money.

Safe Trading

If you have time the safest way to stay mug proof is to do all of your selling using the trade mechanism. Always set up the trade yourself if you are receiving cash – that way you will always be the one to confirm the trade and can control when it is accepted.

Beware some traders will cancel these trades though, and mug you, so try and combine this with self hosping to be 100% safe.

This isn’t something we all have time for, and bazaar selling is clearly the best way to get things sold. If you must sell things in your bazaar you should do two things: Only have a lot to sell when you are going to be in hospital for a long time (self hosp, war, just before you launch an OC or do crimes with hosp outcomes). Alternatively combine your selling with flying – choosing a good destination for both time and likelyhood of stalkers mugging in that location (I don’t fly to Caymans when selling)

Self Hospitalization

Turn revives off, or only have friends/faction do them. Turn revives off, or only have friends/faction do them. How many times do I have to say this..

Turn revives off, or only have friends/faction do them. Three sounds good. So now we have that out the way we can talk about the benefit of self hosping. No one can mug you, but you can’t really do much.. Well all you have to do is make sure you use all your nerve and energy, and do all your buying from item market before you self hosp. Easy!

So how does one self hosp? Lets take a look, starting with short term. (This is not an exhaustive list)

30-90 mins
attempt a run away and fail (25e, but if player is paying for success you can make money too)
use a wrong blood bag (1hr med cooldown)
time out in an RR game and have opponent shoot you in the back ($10)

longer than 5 hrs
fail warehouse crime
OD on Xanax/PCP (ha! never happens when you want)
Fail some OCs (hard to get right)

Hiding Money

Hiding money is a fine art. Especially for those who don’t own a company, or have trust/leadership in their faction. Again we can do this in a few ways, depending on how long we want to hide it for.

15 minutes – create an RR game with a password and you can put as much money in there as you like – only issue is people can see your money 😉

6 hours – create a trade with a friend, put in your money, never accept the trade (ask your friend not to either), You can then add and remove money as you like.

min 24 hours -Bookies – Cheap trick, you can change your bet once it is made. Pick the last bet that will close and put your money in that, when it gets close to the day (or when you need it) change the bet to a lower amount, and you get your money back. (Please note, I do not know if this is seen as an exploit, check with staff)

min 24 hours – Auction House – good if you want to hide for min 24 hours, and get a good deal. Bid on something that you know you will be outbid on – choosing a length of auction suited to your hide time. If someone does outbid you then you will have 24 hours of safety for that cash

min 24 hours – Stocks – not an easy one, but if you buy the cheapest looking stock that is increasing or steady, buy and sell straight away. It can take time to sell, but once it does you again get up to 24 hours of safety.

You can also use this method during your flights to hide money from sales – just be aware you can’t get at it until you are in torn (if it sells) but it will stop muggers stalking your landing.

N/A – Caymans – If you don’t mind having to fly to the Caymans, and risk the stalkers, you can always fly to the Caymans and use the bank there. This is best done in two stages – use a fake trade with a friend whilst you are flying, once there and ready to bank use chat to get your friend to cancel the trade, banking almost instantly.